Wednesday, 4 July 2007

Last night I picked some of the Purple Podded Peas - the pods were plump and had a beautiful texture like expensive Italian leather. Inside the peas were tightly packed in a neat row, as the pod is split the peas remain on alternate sides of the pod - neat! I cooked the shelled peas with some pasta to go with a tomato and lamb sauce, they had a soft sweet flavour. The young purple pods picked as mange tout may look cool but to be honest they are a tad stringy (not a good attribute for a mange tout), as mature peas these definitely make the grade. I'll pick a few more to cook, but I'll make sure I save lots to dry to plant next year.

7 comments:

These are really beautiful, and it's great to have a good critique of their attributes. Presumably the leaves are the usual green, but what colour are the flowers?

I have some borlotti beans growing just outside my kitchen window; they've just come into bud, and the flowers are white, which I wasn't expecting - I thought they'd be red, or red and white (the beans themselves are those pale ones streaked with red).

Hi Joanna, if you click on the label link "Purple Podded Peas" you will see the other blog entries charting the progress of the PPPs - the flowers are very pretty.

Borlotti beans are great - I love the way the colours on the pods develop. This year I'm growing a climbing bean "Poletschka" (Ukrainian) with little shiny dark indigo beans - not flowering yet; a dwarf bean "Vermont Cranberry" from New England it has cranberry red beans flecked with white and the flowers are creamy-yellow; and a runner bean "Black Salford" scarlet flowers, dark green pods with stunning jet black beans - this is my favourite runner beans and I always save some seed. All from the Heritage Seed Library.

Hello John,Apart from the PPPs I usually just grow "Carouby de Mausanne" mange tout (excellent flavour, but hasn't done well this year). This year I also have a mange tout called "Reuzensuiker" which has been excellent. I haven't tried "Alderman" - have heard it's a good one for flavour.

I love reading all the comments (except for spam and advertising which I will delete) and I'll reply here in the comments under each blog post, it may take a few days if I'm busy.You don't need to have a blog to leave a comment, you can select the name/URL option and fill in just your name instead of a blog link.